Blue’s clues for top schools: Lessons from KIPP STRIVE

On November 9-10, the US Department of Education bestowed the Blue Ribbon award to 285 public schools and 50 private schools across the country. The goal of the 33-year-old program is to recognize the best performing schools in the nation: public, charter, private, magnet, alternative or Title I. For...

Race to the Top in retrospect

Today, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is giving a speech at a high school in Boston that has improved after receiving a federal School Improvement Grant (SIG). He’ll be unveiling his department’s latest report on the results of the SIG program and a new four-year report on Race to the Top, the Obama...

A ‘perfect storm’ for the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria

Are we reverting to a pre-antibiotic age? Dirty hospitals, poor prescribing practices by physicians and poor patient adherence to correct antibiotic use mean that routine medications are becoming increasing obsolescent. Twenty20 License The risk is accelerating because of new global substandard medicines...

New Carpe Diem economic news and data quiz

Test your knowledge of recent economic news and data, most of which has been featured in recent posts on the Carpe Diem blog, with this new 10-question quiz. Loading Carpe Diem Economic News and Data Quiz // from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1Lcy8...

If not this TPP, then what?

Whatever the merits of the existing Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, it might not be ratified. A number of Members of Congress who may refuse to vote for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are avowed free traders. Free traders who find the TPP inadequate as it stands are obliged to offer a...

TPP: A bronze-standard free trade agreement (go for gold)

The Trans-Pacific Partnership covers an enormous amount of ground and has important strengths and multiple weaknesses. Claims of its broad magnificence or awfulness are not credible. The view here stems from reading all 30 chapters, the four bulky annexes, and various side letters. The first read (a...

America vs. China: Showdown in the South China Sea?

“Expect more.” That is the succinct response of a senior U.S. defense official when asked informally whether the dispatch in October of a U.S. Navy ship within 12 nautical miles of one of China’s newly constructed islands in the Spratly Island chain was a one-off event. Officials in the Obama Administration seem well aware that failure to follow on with their highly publicized freedom of navigation...

A last hurray for Republican tax slashers

The Republican party’s raison d’être is cutting taxes. It may even be its divine commission. God put Republicans on earth to cut taxes, the conservative columnist, Robert Novak, once said, and failure to do that means “they have no useful function”. John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Donald...

Downed plane reminds: War on terror not over

Evidence that terrorists destroyed a Russian civilian passenger plane over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula continues to mount, although competent authorities still decline to say so definitively. It speaks volumes, however, that President Obama and British Prime Minister Cameron have already publicly mentioned...

Senator Cruz, VATs are paid by people

As I pointed out last month, Senator Ted Cruz’s proposed 16% value added tax (VAT) and Senator Rand Paul’s proposed 14.5% VAT would be largely invisible to taxpayers because they would not be listed on customer receipts or pay stubs. And both candidates’ insistence on calling their VATs “business taxes”...

Minimum wage proponents narrowly focus on more money. Opponents focus more broadly on maximizing opportunities

In a Cafe Hayek post today on the minimum wage (“A Sufficient Reason to Oppose the Minimum Wage“), Don Boudreaux writes: A sufficient reason to oppose the minimum wage is that it prices some people out of jobs that they would otherwise have voluntarily chosen to take. The number of people priced out of jobs is, for me, irrelevant to this assessment (although, of course, the greater the number...

A last hurrah for Republican tax slashers

Republican U.S. presidential candidates in the debate held by Fox Business Network for the top 2016 U.S. Republican presidential candidates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young. From my new column in the Financial Times: The Republican Party’s raison d’être is cutting taxes....

The EU leads boldly on Israeli-Palestinian peace

Yesterday, the European Union in its infinite wisdom decided to implement a demand that all products made in Israeli settlement the West Bank and Gaza be labeled. CNN explains: Labeling such goods as “product from Golan Heights” or “product from West Bank” would not be specific enough and therefore...

One debate, two perspectives

In contrast to the previous two Republican presidential debates, which were criticized for quirky and “gotcha” questions, the one held in Milwaukee on Tuesday night by Fox Business Network got right into meaty issues with a question on the minimum wage. Bloomberg View’s Ramesh Ponnuru and Paula Dwyer give their blow by blow of some of the issues discussed. Dwyer: Donald Trump says he’s not sympathetic...

Bush was better, but is that enough?

A new McClatchy/Marist poll released earlier this week revealed that 58 percent of those surveyed said the more they hear about Jeb Bush the less they like him. Only 32 percent said the more they hear, the more they like him. His marks were worse than any of the other candidates the pollsters asked about, including Trump. In fairness to Bush, the poll was taken after his weak performance in the CNBC...

The price of free speech in Japan

It’s not just American university campuses that are being roiled by clashes over the limits of free speech. At one of Japan’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, no less than the president himself has just been dismissed by his academic colleagues for publicly supporting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The dispute taps into a deeper national debate over Japan’s future. A favorite claim of...

How substandard medicines drive antimicrobial resistance

Antibiotic resistance already kills over twenty thousand Americans every year; no one knows the real impact on poorer nations. But estimates of the wider impact are beginning to emerge, and the British government claims that drug resistance will cost 6% of global wealth or roughly $14 trillion by 2050. In...

Concerns over Brexit are not scaremongering

Few sayings encapsulate the attitude of British Eurosceptics towards the European Union better than Groucho Marx’s maxim: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” Witticisms, however, are rarely a good guide to action, especially in a world where no political arrangements, domestic or international, are perfect. The Heritage Foundation’s Nile Gardiner – probably the most...

Why Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are on the rise

Tuesday night’s Fox Business/Wall Street Journal debate in Milwaukee provided clues as to why Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have been climbing, not by wide margins but perceptibly, into the top polling positions of the candidates behind the two poll leaders, Donald Trump and Ben Carson. The widespread assumption among political insiders is that in crunch time, when things really matter, Republican voters...

A marriage penalty for the poor

Few issues in American politics are more hotly debated than the role of marriage in explaining poverty. Some argue that the decline in marriage is one of the main contributors to poverty and low-income in America. Others argue that economic and structural factors are more important. But whatever side you come down on, it is hard to justify financially penalizing couples with children who choose to...

Why political polls are so often wrong

The Real Clear Politics average of polls in the Kentucky governor race, published Oct. 30, showed Democrat Jack Conway leading Republican Matt Bevin 44%-41%. But in the Nov. 3 election Mr. Bevin won 53%-44%. The polls were wrong, election watchers exclaimed, once again. The RCP average of polls just before Kentucky’s 2014 Senate race showed Mitch McConnell ahead of Democrat Alison Grimes, 49%-42%....

Donald Trump’s immigration plan would cause U.S. citizens to be deported

“You’re going to have a deportation force.”  — Donald Trump, Nov. 11 As you heard again during Tuesday’s GOP primary debate, Donald Trump has as a policy goal turning the United States into a police state to facilitate the mass roundup of around 11 million men, women and children who are living in the country unlawfully. He wants to expel them from our borders via a “deportation force.” His faith...

Antimicrobial resistance: How substandard medicines contribute

Abstract:  The possibility of reverting to the pre-antibiotic era is increasing. With dirty hospitals, poor prescribing practices by physicians, and poor patient adherence to correct antibiotic use, the threat was already real. But now an increase in the production of substandard medicines is probably...

The earned income tax credit and marriage penalties: Does a childless worker expansion make them worse?

Key Points The earned income tax credit (EITC) is an effective tool to reduce poverty, but it penalizes marriage. Existing research primarily relies on hypothetical situations to document EITC marriage penalties, with little empirical work exploring penalties based on real-life situations. This paper analyzes survey data from low-income parents with young children in urban areas and finds that EITC...